Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

This is a tiny application that will probably allow you to take pictures with a UVC webcam such as those that are built into laptops and netbooks. The gui is a ripoff of the Screencap utility and works exactly the same way. It has no preview feature, so each picture is a surprise. The upside is that it has no extra dependencies and doesn't take up much space. I will probably add a time-lapse photography feature later and maybe a script that can phone home with pictures the thief if your laptop gets stolen.

Update: I've uploaded version .2. I changed the backend from uvccapture to fswebcam which should take better pictures and support a wider variety of hardware. It now requires libgd so I'm leaving version 1 up in case you prefer the smaller size.

Lobster · Posted: Tue 20 Oct 2009, 04:30 Post subject:

01micko · Joined: 11 Oct 2008 Posts: 7037 Location: qld

jemimah

Thanks for this. Working fine on my 701SD.

Suggestion: Ability to choose the save dir. Smile

Cheers

craftybear · Posted: Tue 20 Oct 2009, 06:39 Post subject:

01micko · Joined: 11 Oct 2008 Posts: 7037 Location: qld

gposil · Posted: Tue 20 Oct 2009, 07:35 Post subject:

For those using dpup, the webcam snapshot is available in Luvcview Webcam Viewer...

Cheers

technosaurus · Joined: 18 May 2008 Posts: 3845

for video:

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

Lobster, you might be able to get it to work by messing with the uvccapture command on the command line. I made the arguments that worked on my EEE to be the defaults but other cameras may work better with different args.

01Micko, you're supposed to choose the save directory by choosing SaveAs from your image viewer once you get a photo you like. Just like the screencap command.

Technosaurus, that is really cool! I think I will add a button for that.

I'm working on porting UCview or at least Unicap with a light frontend. I tried Luvcview, but didn't like the UI, and I wasn't sure what to do with a pnm file on puppy. Guvcview was a lot better but the windows seemed a bit too large to be comfortable on a netbook. I guess I have to find out if SDL or Unicap is a bigger library, though SDL opens up the possibility of adding some cool games. I'll probably post packages for both UCview and Guvcview at some point if nobody has already.

gposil · Posted: Tue 20 Oct 2009, 10:28 Post subject:

A couple of points....uvc in any incarnation, Guvcview, Luvcview, Ucview...etc only work for v4l2 compliant devices, a lot of standalone web cams are v4l and will not work...Most if not all laptop built-in webcams are v4l2.

Luvcview, which dpup uses, creates snapshots in pnm format, which all modern flavours of linux(Puppy included) can convert to png, jpg, tiff or ps/pdf with the pnmto???? commands in /usr/bin. Luvcview also captures video/audio very nicely as well.

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

Version .2 is out. Give it a try if version .1 didn't work well for you.

Lobster · Posted: Tue 27 Oct 2009, 05:15 Post subject:

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

I need to do a little research on the ffmpeg options and then I'll probably make a separate webcam-capture UI. I haven't had the chance to see just how large Gucview and dependencies are; that may be a nicer option.

technosaurus · Joined: 18 May 2008 Posts: 3845

if audio doesn't work first check that the mic volume is not turned down or muted and if that doesn't work you may try replacing 'oss' with 'alsa'